Claim termination procedure query

Hi there Rightnetziens

Just wondering if anybody has any advice on the following scenario.

Claimant is sent a RFFI on 21/04/17. Asking for an update on her current earnings and also for information about out her children, on of whom is already 18 and the other is about to turn 18. Client does not respond to the letter apart to write to the council asking them to update their system as she is no longer using her married name.

Revision decision is made on 03/05/17 to take effect from 05/06/17 (the Monday after her sons 18th birthday). The son is removed as a dependent child from her applicable amount. As client is still receiving Tax Credits for him this means that she loses entitlement. Decision letter to client states that she is no longer entitled to HB but invites her to provide the requested info re. her son by 30/05/17. Client is sent a separate letter a day later advising that the council is now applying the lowest NDD to the claim but not making any mention of the fact that son has been removed from applicable amount and that the HB has stopped.

Client contacts council by telephone on 07/06/17 asking why her housing benefit has stopped. She is advised that she is no longer entitled because her income is too high but is not given any further explanation about how this has come about (i.e. that it is not that her income has gone up and is now too high but that her applicable amount has gone down). Nothing further happens from this point.

The straightforward course of action is to put in a late appeal, with the justification for lateness being that client was given at best unclear information on why her claim had stopped and what could be done to get it reinstated. But this will be very late and I was trying to think if there was any back up/alternative options.

I was just wondering what people think of whether her claim was terminated correctly? Normally when we see claims being terminated for a lack of response to a RFFI the claimant will get an extra chance to provide the info (they get the RFFI letter, the suspension letter and then the termination letter and at each point get a month to provide the info). However in this case the client was sent the RFFI, and then about two weeks later the revision decision is made which has the effect of closing the claim. So it seems to me that client received one prompt less and had less than half the time to try and resolve the issue. Another thing that seems a bit off to me is that the son was removed from the applicable amount even though the client was still getting the same amount of TCs that she had done for a long time, which in the absence of any evidence to the contrary would suggest that son was still a qualifying young person and so should have remained in the applicable amount. I feel that at the point of the son turning 18 the claim should have been suspended and a further RFFI sent out rather than a revision being immediately carried out that had the effect of ending the claim.

The problem is that I am struggling to find any backing for this ‘gut feeling’ in our HB book or in the HB guidance manual. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!!